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A digital rights organization has stated to have scraped millions of songs from the popular streaming service and is getting ready to release them online.

Possible Impetus for AI Development

Observers noted the seeming data breach could aid artificial intelligence firms searching for data to develop their models.

An entity known as Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86 million music files from the platform and 256 million rows of metadata such as artist and album names. Spotify, which carries more than 100 million songs, stated that the breach did not represent its full catalog.

“We have identified and deactivated the nefarious user accounts that were involved in illegal scraping,” said a Spotify spokesperson.

The Swedish service, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, added that an investigation into unauthorized access identified a external actor collected public metadata and used illicit methods to bypass DRM [digital rights management].

Group's Declared Goal and Worries

The streaming service does not think the audio taken by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for providing links to pirated books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.

They claimed the audio files accounted for 99.6% of all music streamed to by Spotify users and would be distributed via ‘torrents’, a method of sharing large digital files online.

“Of course Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great start,” said Anna’s Archive, which describes its purpose as “preserving humanity’s knowledge and culture”.

AI Training and Copyright Debate

Ed Newton-Rex for defending artists’ rights, remarked the breached music would likely be used for developing AI models.

“Educating models on illegally sourced data is unfortunately widespread in the tech sector, so this stolen music is highly likely to be used training AI models,” he said.

The Anna’s Archive site makes references to LibGen, a huge online repository of pirated books that has allegedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to develop its AI models.

A founder of an AI startup wrote on the professional network that members of the public could in theory “build their own personal free equivalent of Spotify”. The executive added it could also allow tech companies to “train on modern music at a large volume”.

Intellectual property law has emerged as a battleground between creatives, writers and creatives on one side and AI companies on the other.

Policy Proposals and Reactions

Across Britain, artists and writers have raised concerns against a ministerial proposal to let AI companies utilize protected work without consent unless the owner opts out. Almost every participant to a government call for evidence on the proposal has backed artists’ concerns.

The secretary of state for science, research and technology informed parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the matter, adding that ministers would “take the time to get this right”. The government has pledged to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by March 2025.